As the Internet and World Wide Web continue to expand, and as increasing numbers of households and businesses join the online marketplace, opportunities for merchants and consumers to reach each other will continue to increase. The environment of electronic commerce involves challenges and advantages different from those of a physical marketplace. This is especially true in the area of advertising. Electronic advertising in the Internet marketplace is vastly different from paper advertisements in the physical marketplace in many ways. One significant difference is that electronic commerce is not bounded by physical proximity; once there is access to the Internet, there is also access to the entire Internet marketplace. Thus, the audience for electronic advertising can potentially be the entire online population. Another difference is that participants in electronic commerce have the ability to gather various types of information without marketplace or consumer surveys. Thus, certain labor costs associated with advertising in the physical marketplace are reduced or non-existent in the electronic marketplace.
On the other hand, the differences of the Internet marketplace also present challenges for electronic advertising. Electronic advertising involves technological competence and equipment that interested market participants may not possess. Additionally, electronic advertising involves economics that may be quite different from the economics of advertising in the physical marketplace. Accordingly, there is continued interest in further developing and improving various aspects of electronic advertising and of the Internet marketplace to address these and other challenges.